


roads untaken (by no virtue of my own)

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mentioned Admiral Sanda, Mentioned Honerva, Mentioned Kolivan, Mentioned Matt Holt, Mentioned Sam Holt, Mentioned Voltron: Legendary Defender Team, Motherhood, Parallels, Post-Season/Series 08 Finale, The moms in this show deserve more appreciation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 05:53:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17074607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “They are the defenders of the universe. Only they can totally understand their bond with the princess, and the void she left behind,” Krolia said softly. “No matter how much we want our children back.”Oh.She understood. This strange, purple double agent who only half-grasped common Earth practicesunderstoodwhat Colleen was going through. The realization made relief, and comfort, and terror, and revulsion erupt violently in her chest, all in equal measure.I’ll do whatever it takes to see my kids again,she’d once said. Now, the words returned to her in a cruel echo. She tried to bite down the bile of emotions churning inside her.





	roads untaken (by no virtue of my own)

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first attempt to contribute to the Voltron fandom, and also my first time posting on this site. Which, _geez,_ is it complicated. Formatting here is tedious.
> 
> Season 8 left me with so many emotions that I couldn't bring myself to sleep properly. Although somehow, I found myself able to study for my Russian history final. After much effort. Those emotions bubbled up into at least five different plotbunnies, but all the others are lying on the cutting room floor.
> 
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> 
> ~~Also, I'm not going to lie, and I'm just gonna paint a target on my back right now: I thought the ending was beautiful and made sense and was thematically consistent, and that the series ended on a good note. Shhh...~~

Like a dense and cloying fog, silence hung. The bite of the cold prickled at Colleen’s face as it settled over her. Fogs were disorienting because they obscured vision, yes, but it was their ever-present, misty chill that made the unease so tangible, so _visceral._ Grief blanketed this wing of the Atlas and had fallen upon the paladins in an eerie hush, and everyone else had fallen silent along with them. It wasn’t right to disturb their mourning.

It wasn’t like this for the rest of the crew—everywhere else on the Atlas was abuzz with activity. There was still a ship to run, and a quiet, relieved kind of giddiness that thrummed through the air. Honerva was gone, the universe was safe—they could go _home._ No one else grieved Allura as much as her family had. The crew had held a memorial for her, and many of them had extended condolences; but none of them had collapsed on their knees as Coran had, bowed under the weight of his sobs. None of them had looked as dazed as Romelle, as empty as Keith, as despairing as Hunk, as strained as Shiro, as exhausted as Katie; as lost as Lance. Colleen’s heart choked and cracked in sympathy. The princess had been so fiercely determined, and had so dearly treasured her friends. It wasn’t fair that someone like her was gone, her essence pulled apart and scattered across the universe—instead of whole, and beaming, and bright—when she was so deeply missed.

Blowing out a deep sigh through her nose, Colleen readjusted the tablet in her hands as the door in front of her beeped and swished open. The first Altean juniberry flower had withered and died weeks ago, but she still had its genetic code. She’d spent the better part of the day trying to synthesize more seeds, and her entire upper half ached from the effort. All she could think to do was collapse bonelessly onto her favorite couch.

Fortunately but unfortunately, she realized the couch was already occupied before she could fall face first into the decorative throw pillows. Krolia was leaning over the coffee table, mouth pressed flat as she swiped through the holographic projections of a Marmoran device.

“Oh,” Colleen said, stepping away awkwardly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were here.”

Krolia glanced up at her, surprise dimly shining through for the briefest of seconds before receding. “It’s no problem,” she replied, gesturing to the empty space. “There’s plenty of room.”

Colleen accepted the invitation and sat down wordlessly, unsure of what to say. Her eyes wandered to the hologram. It looked like some kind of rock formation—an asteroid, maybe. Jagged points peaked out from beneath a domed starburst of a plane, as if a craggly meteoroid had crashed into a smooth sheet of half-hardened magma before cooling and fusing together while hurtling across the galaxy.

“What is that?” she asked.

“Planet Daibazaal,” Krolia answered, eyes trained once again on the blocks of Galran script next to the visual. “The lost Galra homeworld. It reappeared with Voltron and Altea, and it isn’t that far. The other blades are surveying it and running reconnaissance right now—Kolivan just sent me these specs.”

“Why didn’t you go with them?”

“I wanted to be here in case Keith needed me.” Krolia was looking at her, now, eyes expectant. She must have known that Colleen had stopped by Allura’s room on her way here.

Colleen sighed again, shoulders sagging. “He’s doing about as well as the rest of them, which means he isn’t doing well at all. They’re all piled up in her bed, and they said they didn’t want anything when I asked.” It was frustrating to think about. It made her feel so _useless,_ and she hated nothing more than that—a trait she and Katie shared. Walking away from the tangle of choked cries and quivering shoulders had felt counterintuitive and went against all her instincts as a mother. It was her job to protect Katie—and by extension, Katie’s friends—her job to take all the pain away. But maybe that was why her daughter had pulled away last time. Maybe her efforts to protect her child after the Kerberos mission had felt too stifling and had pushed her to run off. Maybe Katie needed space, and the others needed it too.

(...maybe Colleen wasn't ready to confront Allura's death herself, yet. The fight they'd faced had been so grand and sweeping, and had been riddled with such an intense, private sort of hurt, just _thinking_ about it made her feel uneasy.)

Krolia frowned, reaching to press the indigo button on her device. When the hologram cut off, she pulled back and laced her fingers together, frowning at her knees. “Have they eaten anything?”

“Not since Veronica brought them lunch from the commissary.”

Krolia’s shoulders stiffened slightly at that, and Colleen found herself studying the other woman closely. She’d never known exactly what to think of Krolia. Her first and only real impression of this stranger had come several days after all the paladins were discharged from the med bay. Krolia’s eyes had followed her keenly as she fought with Katie after the boys had suggested going out to Platt City to see if the park had reopened, glinting with fascination and maybe even amusement. As if grounding your teenager for running off on an unapproved and extended space adventure was a little ridiculous. After that, Team Voltron and their families had all been placed in the same wing on the Atlas, but Colleen had been busy with the plants, and Krolia had been busy with the Blade of Marmora. They’d never exchanged more than perfunctory pleasantries.

Now, though...well. Krolia was a private person. A lifelong career in espionage had clearly instilled in her a mask of indifference to show the world. But Colleen’s own anxieties were suddenly mirrored back to her. The faint lines of worry and fatigue; the white-knuckled death grip of restless fingers; the furtive, uncertain glances, as if she had something to hide—it was all there.

“They are the defenders of the universe. They're the only ones who totally understand their bond with the princess, and the void she left behind,” Krolia said softly. “No matter how much we want our children back.”

Oh.

She understood. This strange, alien double agent who only half-grasped common Earth practices _understood_ what Colleen was going through. The realization made relief, and comfort, and terror, and revulsion erupt violently in her chest, all in equal measure. _I’ll do whatever it takes to see my kids again,_ she’d once said. Now, the words returned to her in a cruel echo. She tried to bite down the bile of emotions churning inside her.

“I went crazy when Katie disappeared,” she blurted out impulsively, overwhelmed and defeated. “All I could do was worry. My son and husband had already vanished, so I was all alone in this big house. Then, when Sam came back, we couldn’t contact her, and Admiral Sanda wouldn’t let the world know anything. We hacked every single broadcasting network and let the whole world know. Sendak’s invasion was coming, and we knew we had to prepare, but more than anything, all I wanted was to see Katie again.”

Her outburst over, Colleen felt her face warming with shame as silence crashed back down upon them. Her wits had just about returned to her along with a fully crafted apology when Krolia finally responded.

“I left my son to protect him from the Galra.” She wasn’t looking at Colleen anymore, and was instead gazing out the massive window before them, thoughts strewn across the starry sky. “I never expected to see him again, but I swore to myself that I would burn down the entire universe for him if I had to.”

Colleen paused, all thoughts of apologizing stuttering to a stop. “How old was he when you left?”

“Four months.” A faint and brittle smile ghosted across Krolia’s face. “I know it’s silly, but part of me thought he’d still be the infant I’d left behind. At first, I only recognized him, because he had my blade. It was a shock to see how much he’d changed.”

Colleen huffed out a soft chuckle in commiseration. “I thought everything would go back to the way it had been once I got Katie back. Instead, my fifteen-year-old is Garrison to defend the entire _planet."_

Silence fell again, its fog lapping at them gently, and the elephant in the room loomed large with her red, Altean marks and long, white hair. Colleen wondered at a woman who’d once yearned for her child; her child that she could have, would have, and had torn _everything_ apart for; her child who'd been taken away by the universe and returned no longer wholly hers.

She wished she could bring herself to hate Honerva.

**Author's Note:**

> Krolia has been my favorite ever since I got back to watching Voltron, and Colleen is one of the comedic highlights of this season and is such a win on so many levels. I love them both.
> 
> On a completely unrelated note, I ended up googling a few questions about infant development, trying to figure out how old Keith was when Krolia left him. We had some clues: in "Razor's Edge", we see him swaddled between his parents late at night while Krolia feeds him milk. Google told me that every baby is different, but for all three of the questions I looked up ("When do babies start eating solids?", "When do babies not need to be swaddled?", and "When do babies sleep through the night?"), I learned that four months is within the average time frame for each of these questions. So, assuming Keith's development follows human trajectory—which I'm guessing it does, since his physical appearance does match up with someone in their late teens/early twenties—it's a safe bet to say that he was only four months when she left. Which, to me, sounds _so. Freaking. Sad._
> 
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> 
> Anyway, feedback and constructive criticism would be really appreciated, especially if it pertains to grammar. (An entire college degree's worth of essays written and I _still_ get unsure about the proper grammar for dialogue. Oh, well. Not a creative writing or English major, I guess.)


End file.
